


Lonely Blue Boy

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [116]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 04:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8607946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard, blue-skinned from silver poisoning."Little blue boy John Sheppard grows up into a man - or a monster.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brumeier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/gifts).



> Much thanks to Brumeier for being an awesome beta and also for indulging my weird, weird fic musings.

All growing up, John had been terribly self-conscious about his ears. They were sharp and pointy and rather decidedly elfin. But no one called him an elf.

Because they didn’t notice his ears. They noticed his skin. Because it was blue.

His mother had noticed his ears, though, when he was a baby. And she’d called him an elf. Thought he was a changeling, actually, and tried to drive the evil of the fae out of him by overdosing him colloidal silver.

(His mother had been a little unstable. It was cold iron that was inimical to the fair folk, not silver. She was locked away somewhere now, although John and his big brother Dave had spent a good chunk of their childhood thinking she was dead.)

A succession of nannies had done their best to deal with John’s condition ( _argyria_ , one of the first words he’d learned to spell after a very shaky _John_ and _Dad_ and _Dave_ ). Some had instructed John and Dave to pretend the condition simply didn’t exist, for John to walk into a room and smile and shake hands and act like everything was normal. Which was silly, because everyone could see John and his skin, and it wasn’t like he could pretend himself normal-colored. Some had instructed Dave to take the brunt of social interaction, for John to pretend he didn’t exist, to stay back and keep his head down and hope no one noticed. Which was also silly, because John was a person and people couldn’t just stop existing without dying. Yet others tried to make light of the situation, and John spent several Halloweens in his childhood dressed as a Smurf.

He didn’t mind it, actually. If they went trick-or-treating somewhere other than their own neighborhood, no one knew that his blue skin wasn’t real, and he got pats on the head and pinches on the cheek and sometimes extra candy for _going all-out_ on his costume.

*

John knew Dad and Dave went to great lengths to try to protect him, too. John and Dave went to fancy boarding schools that were like really fancy prisons, all big beds and dorky uniforms and subjects like Latin and French, and every year Dad had a stern talking to with the staff and principal, and Dave had a stern talking to with all the boys in his grade and younger, and John was trapped in the school for another year. He was allowed outside for PE but never for the forays into town - he’d have to bribe a classmate to pick things up for him - and he was never allowed to go to the dances with the girls’ school.

The other boys at school didn’t like John. Some of them were afraid of him. Others just thought he was freaky-looking. They weren’t stupid enough to overtly pick on him, though, because that would get back to Dad or worse, back to Dave. They just - didn’t talk to him, unless a teacher told them to. Didn’t look at him, half the time. They pretended he wasn’t there.

John remembered his lessons from his old nannies, and he did the same. Pretended he wasn’t there.

Till Francis Douglass showed up at school when John was twelve. He was half-black, half-Chinese, with golden skin and tightly-curled black hair and distinctive eyes, and apart from John, the only student who wasn’t perfectly, neatly white.

“What happened to you?” Frankie asked, dumping his backpack on his new bed - conveniently next to John’s.

John tilted his head, gestured an ear. “My mom was crazy. She thought I was an elf, so she tried to poison the elf out of me with silver.”

Frankie frowned. “But iron is what gets elves.”

“I know, right?”

“At least the poison didn’t kill you.” Frankie looked John up and down, appraising. “Anyone ever call you the blue elf?”

“Most people don’t call me anything,” John said.

Frankie looked right, looked left, then reached into his backpack and drew out a comic book. Comic books were strictly forbidden on school grounds, and there was an underground trade for them that was almost as thriving as the underground trade for skin mags (of which Dave was the undisputed king, and one day, when he took over Sheppard Industries, he’d be unstoppable).

“Here, check this out. He’s called Nightcrawler.”

It was an X-Men comic book. There was one blue character, a hairy guy called Beast who was super smart and super strong. But Nightcrawler was -

John accepted the comic and stared at the cover.

Nightcrawler was blue and also kind of furry, but he also had pointy ears, and -

John looked up at Frankie, who grinned at him.

“He’s really cool. He’s fast and strong. He also has a prehensile tail - which, if you had one, that would be awesome - and he can teleport.” Frankie plopped down on the edge of John’s bed, which John had seen other boys do on other beds a thousand times, when they wanted to hang out and talk. “You could totally dress up as him for Halloween.”

“Beats dressing up as a Smurf,” John said.

Frankie raised his eyebrows. “Really? You dressed up as a Smurf?”

“A couple of my nannies thought it would be cute.” Somehow those pictures had ended up on campus, and John hadn’t spoken for a week, and then the pictures had vanished and two upperclassmen had been expelled for being implicated in a skin-mag distribution ring, and suddenly Dave had the monopoly on campus.

 _Two birds, one stone,_ he’d said with a shrug when John had asked, but he’d also ruffled John’s hair and added gruffly, _No one messes with my brother._

On top of liking the X-Men and having a seemingly endless supply of comics (hidden in a hollowed-out math textbook), Frankie was amazing at math. He showed John how math was the root of music, and fancy old-fashioned buildings, how it could describe a sparrow’s flight through the sky and how a plane got off the ground and how it could help him figure out where he was when he was lost, and how to be found.

In Frankie, John had his first real friend besides Dave. Frankie taught John to love math, and John taught Frankie to love music. John played the guitar - and read a lot, and played video games, and a bunch of other things he could do on his own - and it turned out that Frankie had a really pretty singing voice, and together they learned every Johnny Cash song ever.

And then a teacher caught Frankie kissing Hamish Putnam, who was fourteen and all the girls at the girls’ school thought he was dreamy, and both Frankie and Hamish were gone.

John didn’t even get to say goodbye. But Frankie did leave John his two favorite math textbooks - the one filled with comics, and the one filled with all the answers to the universe. John was alone again, desperately alone, had never realized just how alone he was before Frankie, and he threw himself into his hobbies so he would be too busy to realize how alone he was.

Turned out, he was good at math. The teachers started noticing, started giving him harder work, started having him do extra work, do work for competitions. For once they didn’t look at him out of pity, but with something else in their eyes.

And then they sent him to a math competition, to ply his skills against the top math students from other schools in the same grade as him. For the first time, the Sheppard influence failed, and one of the judges reprimanded John sharply for not taking the competition seriously, for coming dressed in a costume, and John, who’d been terrified of such intense scrutiny, had been unable to explain that it wasn’t a costume, that his skin was just that color (like his hair was just that messy), and that was the end of his competitive math career.

He sat outside the principal’s office while his father - who’d flown in on a helicopter specifically for the meeting - shouted and shouted and shouted. Heads rolled, and John didn’t speak for two weeks.

*

He kept doing math, and he kept playing music, and when it was lights out in the dorms, he read Frankie’s old comics and dreamed. Of running away to the circus like Nightcrawler, or being a hero and joining the X-Men like Nightcrawler, or just being able to disappear whenever he wanted.

John graduated high school valedictorian and everyone agreed that the only student address at graduation should be by the salutatorian. John knew on the strength of his name alone he could go to Harvard like Dave had two years before, major in pre-law, minor in whatever he wanted, go on to get his JD MBA, and prepare to join the ranks as a foot-soldier in the Sheppard Empire till it was time to rise through the ranks and stand at his brother’s right hand when Dave ascended the throne.

On the strength of his academic record alone, he could go wherever he wanted.

And where he wanted to go was far, far away from everyone and everything he knew. If he couldn’t run away to the circus, well, he could run away.

As far west as he could get.

To California.

To Stanford.

He’d be without his father’s protection, his brother’s guiding hand, but he just had to _get away_.

Pretending he didn’t exist hadn’t worked. Pretending he was perfectly normal was a stupid plan. So John decided to just stop pretending. He was going to be himself. He was going to go to class, and he was going to work hard, and if he worked hard enough, he could do his own thing, be his own boss, and only have to talk to people when he wanted to.

He tried, desperately, to find Frankie, but his parents had hidden him away pretty thoroughly.

So he was on his own. Him, his guitar, his stack of comics, and a beloved, well-worn math textbook that had been annotated in two hands, sly comments and diagrams in the margins, messages and smiley faces and frowny faces and formulae that had shaped John’s youth.

He was crossing the quad one day, during the spring semester Clubs and Organizations Fair, when he heard a man’s voice booming.

“Uncle Sam wants _you_ , ladies and gentlemen. That’s right, _ladies_ as well as gentlemen. Uncle Sam don’t give a damn if you’re black, white, brown, yellow, or blue. He wants the best and the brightest to defend this country’s freedom.”

And John came up short, because _blue_. He turned and marched right up to the table and looked the man in the eye and said, “Blue? Really?”

The man, wearing a fancy blue Air Force uniform decorated with medals and ribbons, stared at John for a moment. John held his gaze.

“Yes, blue,” the man said. He offered his hand. “I’m Sergeant Bingham. What’s your name, son? We can look up your ASVAB scores and see what exciting careers the Air Force could have in store for you.”

“My name is John Sheppard.”

Sergeant Bingham had admirable composure, picked up his fancy cell phone and punched in a number. “How do you spell your last name?”

John told him.

“Harley? It’s Bingham. I need you to dig up the ASVAB scores for one John Sheppard. What’s your social, son?”

John told him.

There was a pause, and then Bingham raised his eyebrows, looked John up and down with something other than curiosity or disgusted fascination. “Really? Thanks, Harley. You’re the best.” He set the phone down. “Impressive scores, son. So, what do you want to be?”

“What do you mean?”

Bingham spread his arms wide. “Anything you want to be in the Air Force, son, you name it, and we can make it happen.”

“Anything?” John thought of Frankie, of Nightcrawler, of years pretending he didn’t exist, of not talking for weeks on end, of wanting to be able to get away whenever he wanted. “I want to fly.”

Bingham nodded. “All right.” He pushed a white and blue folder full of paper across the table. “You fill this out and bring it back, you show up for orientation, and you’re part of the family.”

Family.

John filled out the paperwork right then and there, signed it in front of Bingham, and picked up his schedule for orientation.

The sky was still dark, the air still cool when John showed up at the ROTC office with a handful of other boys and girls. They stared at him openly. John smiled at them, an expression he’d learned from Frankie, two parts _I don’t care_ and one part _you know you want this_ , because it unsettled people and pissed them off.

The sergeant who met them at the door wasn’t Bingham. He started to let them in, checking their names off a list, and came up short when he saw John.

“One second, son,” he said, and turned and hollered _Bingham_.

John and the rest of the recruits stood around and eavesdropped shamelessly while an argument ensued on the other side of a very thin wall. Where the others were attempting to stand at attention, John leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest and legs crossed at the ankle, and smirked.

“He’s _blue!_ ” the unnamed sergeant spluttered.

The other kids shot John horrified looks, because the man had said it aloud.

Bingham huffed. “It’s a medical condition called argyria. Won’t affect his physical fitness one bit.”

“But -”

“But what? We don’t discriminate on the basis of skin color.”

“When they say skin color they mean black and yellow and red -”

“They mean all skin color. Have you seen his scores?”

“No, but - oh. _Oh_. Damn.”

“Exactly.”

“Well then, what’s his name?”

“Sheppard. John Sheppard.”

The door swung open, and the Sergeant - Harley, his nametag read - stepped out, smoothing down his uniform shirt.

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to your first day as cadets in the United States Air Force. Form up!”

John had read the cadet handbook, knew what _form up_ meant. Apparently no one else did.

Bingham rolled his eyes. “Are you all deaf and illiterate? With the exception of Sheppard, I don’t see anyone forming up!”

Several of the other kids cast John questioning looks, but he stood at attention just behind Rosenbaum - because he’d listened as their names were called - and waited for them to figure it out. When Rosenbaum went to move, John hissed,

“No. You’re Rosenbaum, I’m Sheppard. Parker’s supposed to be in front of you and Takahashi’s supposed to be behind me.”

When they ran, Rosenbaum, a pretty, dark-skinned girl, cast John a grateful smile, and John made his first friend in college, in the Air Force.

Bingham hadn’t been kidding. He ran his cadets like they were a family, and somehow they fell into socializing together even outside of training. If they shared subjects, they studied together. They watched movies ( _Top Gun_ was a natural favorite) together, and they went to parties together, and of course they trained together.

John was tall and lean, naturally a good runner - because he’d learned early on that running was a great way to burn off tension - and his steady hands from playing guitar translated into steady hands with a gun.

*

It was Rosenbaum’s idea to go to the Halloween party dressed as the X-Men. She dressed up as Jubilee, Parker dressed up as Beast, Takahashi dressed up as Cyclops, and of course John dressed up as Nightcrawler.

And then he ran into the girl dressed as Jean Grey.

She thought his costume was fantastic. They talked, and they danced, and Rosenbaum, Parker, and Takahashi hooted when she led him to one of the rooms upstairs. She was just drunk enough that she didn’t notice that the blue on his skin didn’t smear when she put her hands on him, that the blue on his skin extended beyond his face and neck and hands. She was just drunk enough that she didn’t realize how nervous he was, that this was his first time. She was just drunk enough that she fell asleep after, and he could gather up his clothes and slip away so she wouldn’t see the truth of what he was in the light of day.

She was sober enough when she tracked him down after morning PT with the rest of the cadets. He was just coming off his run, sweaty and panting even in the crisp fall air, when she appeared.

“John Sheppard, right?”

He didn’t recognize her at first, without the red wig and the slinky costume.

Rosenbaum and Parker, both female and dark-skinned and fiercely protective of him, arrayed themselves behind him, eyes narrowed. But Takahashi, the oldest son of Nisei family who’d served honorably during WWII, clapped John on the shoulder and said, “Go get ‘er, Tiger.”

“Yes,” John said.

“I’m Nancy Crawford. We met the other night. You were Nightcrawler, I was Jean Grey.”

“I remember.” John swallowed hard and hoped he wasn’t blushing.

Nancy smiled at him. “Want to go get a coffee sometime?”

John’s heart skipped a beat. She was asking him out. Girls had never asked him out before. Before Parker and Rosenbaum, girls hadn’t even really talked to him.

“Yes,” Rosenbaum said. “He can’t talk right now, but if he could, he’d say yes.” She prodded John in the spine, and he nodded vigorously.

Nancy’s smile brightened. “Great! Let me give you my number.”

One cup of coffee turned into several hours at the coffee shop turned into dinner and a movie, and for the first time in John’s life, he had a girlfriend. And he was in love. Nancy was amazing. She was a pre-law student, and she was bright and funny, and she got along with the rest of John’s cadets. She didn’t care about his skin color, called him beautiful, and at first he didn’t believe it, but she insisted on making love with the lights on, and he learned to trust her when she said she loved him.

Nancy and John graduated top of their classes. Nancy was accepted to Harvard Law, and John was slated to go to OTS. They were going to be separated. John couldn’t bear the thought of the distance that would be between them, so he took the plunge. Bought a ring.

And for the first time in four years, he called home. Called Dad and Dave to tell them the news, that he wanted to get married, that he’d found a wonderful woman.

It was like the past four years of silence had never happened. Dad reached out to Nancy’s parents, and Dave introduced John to his fiancee Kathleen, and the Sheppard-Crawford wedding was quite possibly the wedding of the decade, announced all over the Boston Society pages.

*

It was all perfect, for four years. John graduated from OTS and was accepted to Test Pilot School. Nancy graduated from law school summa cum laude and found a job as an assistant US attorney out in California near Edwards where John was training. And then, right near the end of training, it came time for the pilots to select their call signs.

“Nightcrawler,” John said.

Colonel Chang raised his eyebrows. “Like the worm? The fishing bait?”

“Like the X-Men character.”

Lieutenant Holland said, “You know. He’s blue all over. Has a tail. Can teleport.”

“Blue all over,” Chang echoed.

Holland nodded earnestly. “Yeah. Made him harder to see in the darkness and shadows. You know. For stealth purposes.”

Chang narrowed his eyes at John.

John smiled innocently.

Holland added, “You know, according to Middle Eastern lore, the oldest and most intelligent djinn are blue. We could call him Genie.”

“No,” John said, shooting Holland a sour look.

“Nightcrawler it is.” Chang made a note on his clipboard. “Holland?”

“Dutchman, obviously. I’m going to be the Flying Dutchman.”

Where John’s innocently sarcastic smile earned him exasperated sighs from his CO’s, Holland’s shit-eating grin usually ended up with John and Holland scrubbing the latrines with old toothbrushes.

“Fine. Dutchman.” Chang moved on to the others down the row, and Holland dug his elbow into John’s ribs and grinned.

“This is going to be so awesome.”

Being a pilot was awesome. Flying choppers was awesome.

Being given a crash course in Arabic and Pashto and being told he was going to be a front-line weapon for psychological warfare against the locals was not awesome.

Holland, who’d always made irreverent jokes about the color of John’s skin, was horrified.

“They want you to what?”

“Dress up as a fucking djinn to scare the crap out of the ground troops.”

“This is my fault. I made that stupid comment to Chang and -”

“And we’re weapons, Holland. This is what we signed on for.”

Holland shook his head. “No. It isn’t.”

“Orders are orders.” John sighed.

“Well, this puts a huge damper on graduation.” Holland and John were sharing beers in the bar just off-base at Edwards. Holland’s parents and John’s entire family - Nancy, Dave, Kathy, Dad - were flying in tomorrow for the graduation ceremony.

John was huddled over at the bar, shoulders up around his ears, miserable.

“This is insane,” Holland hissed. “They’re treating you like some kind of -”

“Sideshow freak?”

Holland bit his lip. _Freak_ was a word no one had ever dared say in John Sheppard’s presence, at least not where they thought he could hear.

“So they’re going to slap captain’s bars on you and ship you out to A-stan?”

John nodded. “What the hell am I going to tell Nancy?”

Holland snorted, sipped his beer. “Nothing. You can’t. Classified.”

“What would you know about it?”

Holland nudged John’s shoulder with his. “Didn’t think I’d let you go out there alone, did you?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Holland smiled.

*

Telling Nancy nothing was the death knell of their marriage. John shipped out, John walked the shadows and the sands, and he listened to people scream at the very sight of him, at his dusky-blue skin. He came home, and he was miserable. Every night he closed his eyes, remembered the dark blue of the desert skies, and relived each and every terrified cry. The voices were knife-sharp, carving away at his humanity sliver by sliver until he woke in the morning and looked in the mirror and saw a monster.

For the first time, Nancy looked at him and saw a monster, too.

John didn’t know how to stop it, didn’t know how to put the pieces back together so he was the man she loved. He fell apart in the throes of his nightmares, his memories, walking into enemy camps and hearing the men scream and panic, hearing gunfire explode around him as Holland and the rest took advantage of their disarray.

Nancy couldn’t put him back together, because he couldn’t tell her.

Anything.

After a while, she had nothing to give, nothing except the ring he’d given her, and after she left, he sold the house, shipped out to the desert sands, and decided not to look back.

And he didn’t look back. Not at Dad and Dave, who couldn't understand why he was throwing away the best thing that had ever happened to him. Not at Chang, who looked miserably apologetic. He only looked forward. When he got news that Holland’s crew and chopper had gone down while he’d been out on a training run with another psych warfare troop, he saw the rest of his military career as a monster, without Holland’s shit-eating grin and irreverent jokes keeping him together, keeping him human. So he set out on a rescue mission.

He failed.

Holland died.

The Air Force sent him to Antarctica to wait out his time in grade, fail to get promoted the next time he was in the zone, and get forcibly separated from service. He was a glorified bus driver, shuttling people back and forth across the ice. They probably thought he’d have been bored out of his mind, but it was peaceful. White snow and ice. Blue sky. Chopper controls beneath his hands.

No djinn. No screams.

Sometimes no dreams.

John was dozing in the cockpit one day, waiting for a transport that was running late, when a voice pierced his peace and quiet.

“Medic! We need a medic! This man is dying of hypothermia! He’s - he’s cyanotic! Help! _Help!_ ”

John sat bolt upright, and his copy of _Ulysses_ tumbled off his chest and into the snow, which made him curse, and he came face-to-face with a red-faced man with bright blue eyes and an orange fleece pullover beneath a bulky parka.

“What? Where?” John asked, blinking, heart racing.

The man pressed his hand to John’s throat, checking his pulse, slapped another hand to his forehead to test his temperature, and John batted his hands aside.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Hold on,” the man said, eyes wide, “it’s okay, medics are on their way.”

John rolled his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You’re blue! You need warmth!” The man started to shrug out of his parka. “You need body heat -”

“Whoa! For the last time, I’m fine,” John said, catching the edge of the man’s parka to stop him from taking it off.

A couple of uniformed medics came skidding over to the chopper, medic kits in hand, and then came up short.

“False alarm,” Emily said. “New guy’s never met Shep.”

Emily’s partner, Morgan was neither identifiably male or female but a damn good medic, and John had never bothered to ask for clarification.

“McKay, this is Major Sheppard, our transpo guy. Shep, this is Dr. McKay. He’s Canadian.”

“Doctor?” John echoed. “You’d think you guys would’ve covered argyria or methemoglobinemia in med school.”

“Not that kind of doctor,” McKay said snippily, pulling his parka back on. “I have PhDs in physics and engineering.”

“Ah. In that case, my blue skin is a medical condition, but not a fatal one. Strap in. Liftoff in ten.”

Before McKay could respond, John fired up the engines and tugged on his headset, effectively drowning out any conversation.

Until McKay was settled and they were in the air and he’d figured out how to use his headset.

“You look like -”

“A freak?” John had learned to smile around the word.

“A Hindu god.”

“Only got two arms, thanks.”

McKay stared at John unabashedly for a long time. John forced himself to breathe in fours, ride it out. People stared at him all the time. Less, around McMurdo, because there were so few people, and everyone became a familiar face in short order.

Finally, McKay said, “Which is it?”

“Which is what?”

“You said it was a medical condition, argyria or methemoglobinemia. Which is it?”

John glanced at him. “Argyria.”

And that was the end of the conversation.

*

John didn’t see McKay again for months on end. He shuttled people back and forth across the ice, there was the occasional hypothermia scare with new personnel at the base, and John did what he pleased. He finished _Ulysses_ and moved on to _Love in the Time of Cholera_ , and in a fit of boredom, he started recording himself playing every single Johnny Cash song ever.

He was sprawled in the front seat of his chopper, guitar across his knees and strumming chords, when someone said,

“You didn’t strike me as the naturopathic type, but with that Johnny Cash hillbilly music, I can see that I am wrong.”

John straightened up and peered out the chopper - at McKay. “Johnny Cash is an American classic,” he said. “And what about me would make you think I’m into naturopathy?”

“Argyria is caused by overdosing on colloidal silver, which naturopaths think cures everything under the sun, despite the complete lack of a scientific basis for the stuff having any medicinal value whatsoever.”

“I didn’t say I took it voluntarily.”

“Then an idiot tried to poison you.”

“Don’t talk about my mama that way,” John said, with deceptive mildness.

That brought McKay up short. “Your mother?”

“She’s dead now.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Not like _you_ killed her.”

An awkward conversational lull ensued, but John kept playing his guitar. Then McKay said, “Solitary Man? Really? You’re one bad eyeliner job away from being an emo kid.”

“Emo?” John echoed.

McKay rolled his eyes. “Not even I am so culturally oblivious.”

“I’ve been stationed down here for a year,” John said. “I don’t even know who the president is anymore.”

“Really?”

“No, McKay.”

McKay frowned, unamused by John’s baiting him, and something about his mouth was absolutely fascinating, and for the first time since Frankie Douglass, John wondered about kissing another man.

And then his radio crackled.

“Control for Nightcrawler.”

John set his guitar back into its case and straightened up. “Go for Nightcrawler.”

“You have a transport order. General O’Neill’s waiting on the other side of the ice.”

John fastened his guitar case shut. “Roger that. Liftoff in ten.” He glanced at McKay. “Unless you’re coming on this flight, you better step back.”

“Your radio callsign is Nightcrawler?” McKay asked. “Like the fishing bait?”

“Like the X-Man.” John fired up the engines and started his pre-flight check.

McKay stepped back, his expression contemplative.

John slid into the serenity of flying and forgot all about McKay.

Until a glowy squid tried to shoot his chopper down.

*

John sat in the cockpit of his chopper, elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. On top of being a blue-skinned freak, he had some alien gene in him that allowed him to work alien technology.

“So, are you coming to Atlantis with us?”

John lifted his head.

McKay stood next to the chopper, hands jammed into the pockets of his orange fleece pullover.

“We need you,” McKay said.

“I’ve been needed before. _No one else can do it, Sheppard. Your unique physiological make-up makes you indispensable to the mission._ ” John studied McKay, his broad shoulders and square jaw and blue eyes. He looked sincere. And a little nervous.

John had seen sincere before. He’d seen nervous before. But he’d never seen -

McKay hauled himself up into the cockpit, sank down in the co-pilot seat. “It’s Atlantis. I get that you’ve never seen a Stargate before, never been to an alien planet, don’t understand the possibilities. But this is beyond the cutting edge of technology. This is about saving humanity. About taking humanity further than it’s ever been.”

“They’re called the Ancients. Apparently we’ve been there before and we took a massive step back.”

McKay pressed his lips into a thin line. “Okay, fine, Top Gun, your cocky flyboy attitude is very impressive and I’m sure it’s charming with the ladies. But -”

“I don’t play well with others,” John said flatly.

“You wouldn’t have to be in the chain of command. You’d work with me and the science department, with your gene at our disposal.”

“So I’d be a human lightswitch.”

McKay rolled his eyes. “Semantics, Major.”

“I’m a human being,” John snapped. He pushed himself out of the pilot seat and hopped out of the chopper and headed for the hangar door, yanking on his parka as he went.

He didn’t get very far, because O’Neill caught up to him.

“Major Sheppard, just the man I wanted to see.” O’Neill’s smile was deceptively casual and friendly. “Apparently they need me back in Washington. Liftoff in ten, right? That’s your MO?” He craned his neck. “Ah, McKay. Shake a leg, Rodney. I need to have a chat with Major Sheppard, one soldier to another.”

Rodney, his first name was. He shot John an inscrutable look and climbed down out of the chopper, jammed his hands into his pockets again. He avoided O’Neill’s gaze, though, and skirted around John, headed for the door. He had no parka. John winced internally; the brief journey from hangar to base was going to be painful for Rodney, without additional layers.

O’Neill swung himself up into the chopper with an agility that belied his age, settled on his headset, so John shrugged off his parka and climbed back into the pilot seat.

The chopper was in the air and John was pretty sure O’Neill intended to have no conversation whatsoever when O’Neill said,

“I’ve read your file. I know where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Can’t begin to pretend to understand it. But I’ve been in a place where there’s nothing left to lose. Going through the Stargate changed that.”

John opened his mouth to say something that began with _with all due respect_ and ended with something completely disrespectful, but O’Neill continued.

“The Stargate’s an amazing thing. Don’t quite understand the science behind it, but you step through it, and it breaks you down into your constituent parts, and it shoots you halfway across the galaxy, or even into another galaxy, and it reassembles you on the other side. Some people get sick, are afraid that who they are on the other side isn’t the same. They’re right, you know. Who you are on the other side isn’t the same. You’re someone better.”

And John thought of that shadow-self in the desert, breaking apart piece by piece, scream by scream and bullet by bullet.

“Now, that’s enough philosophy from me for one day. How ‘bout that Academy/Citadel game?”

*

John still hadn’t made his decision about Atlantis a week later. He was still shuttling people across the ice, but now people were paying attention to him in a way they hadn’t before. They were watching him and whispering about him, and he knew it didn’t have anything to do with the way he looked, and he was still very irritated by it.

And then Rodney tracked him down in the mess hall. Now that John had top secret clearance, he could set foot in the top secret base and labs, so after dropping personnel and equipment off, he could eat instead of turning right back around and heading back to the regular military base.

“Major Sheppard, can we talk?”

“What about, my genes or my skin?”

“Neither.”

John glanced down at his food - he was almost finished - and then up at Rodney, who wore an expression of earnest determination. “Fine. Let me eat.”

“Sure.” Rodney sat down in the seat opposite him and folded his arms on the tabletop, fully prepared to watch John eat.

John had endured much worse scrutiny.

Rodney said, “Two thousand, two hundred, and sixty-nine.”

“What about it?”

“Is it prime or not?”

John blinked, thought quickly. “Prime.”

Rodney raised his eyebrows.

“What?” John asked between bites of chicken pot pie.

“Your turn.”

“Two thousand, two hundred and forty-nine.”

“Easy. Not prime.”

John huffed. “It’s a fifty-fifty shot, you know. Every time. Doesn’t require any extraordinary mathematical skill.” But no one had played that game with him since - Frankie.

Rodney shrugged, but he was smiling, and he had a nice smile. “I have to admit - I never thought I’d meet a soldier who could play that game and actually, you know, win.”

Was it John’s imagination, or did Rodney sound flirty?

Rodney leaned in and lowered his voice. “Listen, Sheppard -”

“John. Call me John.” All growing up and in school, in college because of ROTC, in the military, he’d always been Sheppard, his father’s son, the cadet, the soldier. Only a handful of people - Frankie, Dave, Nancy - had called him John.

“John. I’m not going to lie to you - Weir and the SGC want you on Atlantis for your gene. Some of the SGC want you because you’re another soldier. I want you because you’re smart. And you’re loyal.”

“Loyal?”

“I heard about your attempt to rescue your friend.”

John’s throat closed.

Rodney continued. “You’re smart, you’re loyal, by all accounts a damn good soldier. And you’re kind of a cool person. You know - you read classical literature and play the guitar. If Atlantis ends up being a one-way trip, well, you’re interesting.”

“Interesting,” John echoed warily.

“To talk to.”

Rodney leaned in and lowered his voice. “Please. Don’t make me beg.”

“Beg for what?”

“Beg you to come to Atlantis. I’m Dr. Rodney McKay. I have two PhDs. I don’t beg for anything.” But his blue eyes were earnest and John had the sense that, for Rodney, this was begging.

John set down his fork and sat back, studied Rodney for a long moment.

Rodney met his gaze and held it.

“All right,” John said. “I’ll go. To Atlantis. With you.”

“Yes! Eureka!” Rodney leaped to his feet and actually did a little victory dance, and for once in John’s life, he wasn’t the center of attention when he was involved in a commotion. Before John could speak, tell Rodney to calm down, Rodney caught John by the lapels of his jacket, kissed him soundly on the mouth, and dashed out of the mess hall shouting, _Elizabeth!_

John watched him go and wondered what Atlantis and the Stargate would bring.

That night, before he went to bed, he stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, and stared at his reflection and thought that maybe O’Neill was right, maybe going through the Stargate could help start to put him back together.

*

John and Rodney had been working side-by-side together for months, preparing for the trip through the Stargate to Atlantis, studying personnel lists, discussing logistics for moving equipment (John was basically going to be the soldier who belonged to the scientists, both Walking Gene and pack mule), when Rodney looked over at him and said, “Has anyone ever told you that you have very pointy ears? Like an elf.” 


End file.
